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Ask HN: How ready for daily driving is Asahi Linux?

125 points by capableweb 4y ago

Been lurking the GitHub issues, Twitter and blog but haven't really gained a full perspective. I'm in the market for a new laptop, currently using a Carbon X1 which I'm generally very happy with. I'm only interested in laptops that I'd run Linux on, but been trying some of the late Apple MacBooks and like the hardware, just the software seems to get in the way sometimes. So came across Asahi Linux project, which seems to be usable for daily work, minus some missing things. But does anyone use Asahi Linux daily here and can talk about their experience?

worldsavior 4y ago
In my opinion, not ready enough, but usable. Speakers are still not safe to use, no use of security components, no Touch-ID, no GPU support, no mics and many more[1]. Though its still very impressive what they got so far, and hope in the near future it will become a full functioning OS. [1] https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
- m00dy 4y ago
  there's a gpu support. We all have watched how it was built on youtube by a Japanese anime character.
- Mizza 4y ago
  I don't think speakers are totally safe to use on OSX either. I've blown out speakers on two machines with VCV Rack. :[
  - NateEag 4y ago
    I wasn't able to find it just now, but I remember a warning several years ago in a SuperCollider tutorial to the effect of "Mac OS X does not hard-limit maximum volume, so BE VERY CAREFUL! You can damage your ears and hardware!" I'm sorry you lost internal speakers to that.
nkobber 4y ago
Many features are not supported yet. For example adjusting screen brightness, internal speakers and power management. Have a look at https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support
- nkobber 4y ago
  EDIT: Power Management works. What I meant is that sleep does not work
bestouff 4y ago
Hint: it's not. I'm not asking much though: I just need a linux laptop which is fast (lots of rust compilations) and can stay for a whole day unplugged. Thunderbolt connectivity to dock it at home (and use bigger screens) would be perfect. I don't need the GPU, I'm mainly using the terminal and the CPU in fast enough for that. But it's not even there: the CPU is heating even when doing nothing, the laptop doesn't sleep when closed (so the battery is draining too fast) , and thunderbolt is still far away. But under some conditions it's nice, even nicer than the XPS 15 i9 I had before. I'm giving some undisclosed amount to marcan monthly, and I hope it'll be "usable" (for me) soon.
- osigurdson 4y ago
  >> the laptop doesn't sleep when closed Linux is amazing but doing the right thing when you close the lid is a seemingly intractable problem for it. Maybe we need a hardware spec and a paid distro to finally solve these kinds of problems.
  - bestouff 4y ago
    They know what to do, it just requires work and coordination with the upstream linux kernel (extending the PSCI api); still it's not done. But don't get mistaken, I like this machine very much. When it works, it works fast and very well.
  - allisdust 4y ago
    Dell XPS is the only laptop where I have seen this working reliably. Worst part is that thanks to zram, many distros removed hibernate functionality. So its not possible now to either sleep or hibernate on many laptop/distro combinations. This makes Linux unusable in most cases due to battery drain (and some times even dangerous as laptop gets super hot inside bag etc).
    - bestouff 4y ago
      "Dell XPS" is too generic a term to be useful. I've got an old XPS 13 which works perfectly; I also got a newer XPS 15 (top of the line, 4500€) which never managed to sleep correctly (thanks to Intel s0ix hybrid-suspend) and often overheated in the bag. I got rid of the latter after 1 year, it was a mess to use.
jnk345u8dfg9hjk 4y ago
Can anyone comment on battery life in the current state of things?
- reacharavindh 4y ago
  I'm interested in this as well. I don't have a personal M* MacBook to test it myself(Writing this on a M1 Pro MacBook Pro provided by work, but I'm obviously not trying to boot Asahi Linux on a work machine). I'm thinking about getting a laptop for personal use, and I'd love for a M1 machine if it runs Linux decently. 1. It needs to be able to sleep/resume like a Mac (shut the lid, and it goes to sleep without sucking the battery, and open the lid, it should wake up within a second or two allowing me to continue what I was doing before sleep), and 2. Needs to last at least 8 hours on battery. The Mac lasts more than 14 hours for my use (very light). Wifi needs to work reliably. I don't care if the GPU lays there unused, I don't care if bluetooth doesn't work. I hope Asahi Linux gets there someday soon.
  - bestouff 4y ago
    See my other comment; wifi works well, power management doesn't work at all.
    - rowanG077 4y ago
      Is this really a power management issue and not the issue that the CPU is constantly hard at work rendering the UI?
      - bestouff 4y ago
        Nope, it's power management. It's not implemented yet, so the laptop doesn't sleep and doesn't even throttle. "In the future" it should work though.
        rowanG077 4y ago
        Power management should work for the most part. Sleeping and hibernation doesn't work yet but it should definitely scale to your load. All the usual things like setting the performance governor should work. See the driver discussion here: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pm/20220504075153.185208-1-marcan@marcan.st/ https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pm/20220504075153.185208-1-mar... If you have issues with this please report it to marcan (or somewhere on IRC in the project or whatever).
yewenjie 4y ago
Related question: does anybody exclusively use any Linux distro on MacBooks in a VM? What is the tradeoff and how is your experience? I want the MacBooks for the battery backup, but I cannot live without NixOS, and seems like Asahi is still a few months away.
- dicknuckle 4y ago
  I only use Lima on the Mac I use at work. But by any limitation by my employer, it's just the easiest thing I've found for running a few containers for my semi-daily workflow.
- bestouff 4y ago
  You could install NixOS on your Mac. I've installed Debian, some use Fedora; you just use the Asahi installer to repartition and install the kernel, and after that you can isntall your distro of choice (not super easy though).
  - yewenjie 4y ago
    I don't want to use Asahi until the experience is seamless - so VM seems to be the only option.
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  I used to do this and there are a few annoyances, and the set of annoyances is different for every VM software you choose. My preference was VMWare Fusion. The worst annoyance there was that it emulated touchpad scrolling as a mouse wheel, so you didn’t get pixel-precise scrolling but instead jumped several lines after you had moved your fingers some significant amount. Overall it all worked fine, and far more reliably than Linux on a modern laptop running natively (if you can get past the minor annoyances).
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  > but I cannot live without NixOS, Just to double check: nix on Darwin isn't good enough?
notpushkin 4y ago
No GPU means it gets pretty hot sometimes (don't even try watching videos, I've literally burned myself :'). Otherwise I'd say I could use it as a daily driver: a bit clunky, needs some tinkering, but everything I personally need (VSCodium, Firefox, Docker, wifi, audio in the headphones) already works and works well. If you already have a MacBook you could use, just give it a try – you can dual-boot, so if it doesn't work you can go back to macOS and try it out again in a couple months. UPD: and of course, don't forget to sponsor the developers! Every little bit counts.
- cultofmetatron 4y ago
  > I've literally burned myself / That can't be good for the longevity of the device.... or of you for that matter
  - notpushkin 4y ago
    It sure can't, which is why I'm not doing it anymore :-) For typical development setup (+ some music not from YouTube) it stays gently warm though (while macOS is stone-cold).
    - 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
      FWIW you can use mpv to play just the audio from any site supported by youtube-dl or yt-dlp (so youtube/twitch/a hundred other platforms): $ mpv --no-video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxx or maybe even something like this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mpv#youtube-dl_audio_with_search https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mpv#youtube-dl_audio_with_s... I've been using a variation on this theme for years, don't even really know how YouTube looks these days
  - judge2020 4y ago
    > for the longevity of the device.... I doubt it's really baking itself; most devices have a lower temperature target set in the software/firmware so that the user doesn't burn their lap, but the default thermal management behavior is done completely on-die.
rowanG077 4y ago
It really depends what you need. The basics are working: USB2, wifi, bt, kb, track pad, 3.5mm jack. So it's definitely usable. Om the other hand there are tons of features that are not ready. GPU, external display (allthough these are relatively close to), speakers, video encoder/decoder, USB3, thunderbolt, deep sleep states and more. Whether it's ready is a very subjective question on what features you consider essential to have. Personally I will wait until GPU, USB3, thunderbolt and external displays work since I use those constantly.
willnonya 4y ago
- NateEag 4y ago
  I've recently started a trial of NixOS on a Framework laptop. It's definitely not ready for a normal person, that's true. I'm working in text files to configure things, and had to debug the GUI not starting after my initial install. That said, I was pleasantly surprised how much the basic Gnome desktop just got right after initial setup. My Bluetooth earbuds were plug-and-play, and watching Netflix in Firefox just required clicking the "Enable DRM" popup that appeared on the Netflix failure page. I've run into more issues as I've progressed (e.g., USB 4 channel audio interface is recognised as a microphone but doesn't just show up by name in Audacity), and yeah - overall it's not ready for a non-programmer. Nonetheless, I've been pleasantly surprised at how much better it works than it did the last time I tried a Linux desktop, in my mid-twenties. Things are definitely better. ...granted, I intentionally chose a machine that was designed with all Linux-supported hardware. I'm sure that helps a lot.
  - c0wb0yc0d3r 4y ago
    Does the fingerprint reader work out of the box?
    - NateEag 4y ago
      It did, surprisingly. I enabled fprintd in my configuration.nix and bam - it showed up in the Gnome settings and I scanned a finger a few times. Now I can sudo without having to think about it (which, granted, might defeat some of sudo's point...).
  - VMtest 4y ago
    how does the new deep sleep s2idle work compare to older gen of laptops? some people reported that a night costs 20 - 30% of battery life on framework laptop (after they configured s2idle deep properly), but nobody cares to measure the possible battery life difference between s2idle deep and s3 edit: I have 11th gen i5 intel nuc, but I didn't check whether the deep sleep works or not since it's a desktop
sirwhinesalot 4y ago
I'm waiting for it to stabilise a bit more, but I'm quite pleased with UTM + a Linux VM. Hopefully we'll get more ARM support in Linux distros, I really hate snaps but otherwise Ubuntu works the best so far in my experience.
cwaffles 4y ago
How is the battery life on Asahi (eg 16in MBP)? I'm debating this versus the HP Elitebook 865[0], which has 64GB ram, top spec Ryzen, and a 72whr battery. They claim 22h battery life, and 13h of youtube playback. [0]: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/mdp/hp-elitebook-865 https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/mdp/hp-elitebook-865
- reacharavindh 4y ago
  I have heard a glowing review of this hp elitebook 865 with Ryzen from someone I know. Although they only use Windows. I’m quite interested in knowing if it can sleep/wake-up like a Mac on Linux. This is my practical choice for a personal Linux machine.
  - cwaffles 4y ago
    Good to know! I'm also considering the Schenker[0] with 99wh battery, or the Starbook[1] as they seem to be linux friendly [0]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Schenker-Vision-14-Laptop-in-review-Massive-Core-i7-12700H-performance-upgrade.664923.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Schenker-Vision-14-Laptop-in-r... [1]: https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starbook https://us.starlabs.systems/pages/starbook
    - reacharavindh 4y ago
      Looks like the Schenker laptop you’re considering has an Intel 12* series cpu. As far as I know it has botched S3 sleep states which means that the laptop won’t properly go to sleep.. instead draining the battery while the lid is shut in a backpack. Hence my interest in the AMD cpu.
pimeys 4y ago
You might want to check the new ThinkPad Z13 and Z16 models with latest Ryzen CPU. You get similar performance and battery life as you'd expect from an M1. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Z13-laptop-review-AMD-s-premium-ThinkPad-with-long-battery-life.639685.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Z13-laptop-rev... No need to change the CPU architecture.
- acomjean 4y ago
  I have the system 76 AMD model for work called Pangolin (not available now) it really quite fast and doesn’t get too hot. Battery life is great. I’ve stressed tested doing genetics work which involved maxing out 16 cores across a couple days. Those new AMDs are great. I went with the system76 because it comes with and they support Linux. It sleeps and wakes ok too
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    What kind of sleep and wake ? (hibernate / s3, etc ?)
    - acomjean 4y ago
      I'm not sure. Its "POPos 22.04 LTS" which is an ubuntu like fork. I use the Suspend on the upper right task bar before closing the lid. I'm pretty sure its not hibernating because it comes right back on lid open. It doesn't make it clear on any system info I can find.
  - reacharavindh 4y ago
    Same question- does it sleep/resume instantly like a Mac? If you shut the lid and come back in say 8 hours, will the battery be empty or does it really “sleep” like a Mac and retain most battery?
    - acomjean 4y ago
      It retains it battery as far as I can tell. I use it daily and haven't had any battery issues day to day. I do tell it to "suspend" before I go home out of habit. Though at work its plugged in. I used the machine last night on battery a couple hours and this morning I charged for 15 minutes then off to meeting where I used the machine. I'm back and 10 minutes in the battery is now at 85% (In the meeting and using the battery for a little presentation). The longest time in my bag has been 3-4 days and the battery has not trickled down to zero. its kinda a movable desktop for me mostly. I have an 7th or 8th gen intel version of the oryx pro. That machine has pretty dismal battery life, but it does game with Nvidia power.
not1ofU 4y ago
If you are in EU, you might be interested in this https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/ https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/ I am not affiliated, but recently purchased one and very happy with it.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Thank you for the recommendation. How are they keyboards and the general build quality? Like the hinges and other mechanical parts?
  - not1ofU 4y ago
    I got one of the midi sized systems, not a laptop. No complaints, the cable management is good. The parts are grand, the delivery was quick. I found it through a youtube channel called "the linux experience" - I think he is German. He does a review on their laptops, maybe that will be more usefull for you.
  - not1ofU 4y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-LTjXdMe2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-LTjXdMe2w
lordgroff 4y ago
Context: first laptop in circa 20 years that doesn't run Linux (m1 air). I don't like OSX and after a year I'm still not really used to it. But... It's still a much better choice to deal with it than Asahi right now (emphasis on right now, I expect it will get there and I will gladly use it at that point). No GPU, no sleep, no audio, no real power management. If you need arm Linux for something concrete, VM is the way to go right now unfortunately.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Yeah, if the option is between MacBook + macOS VS any other solid laptop with Linux, I'm gonna have to do with the second option. Any time I tried to use macOS (which, for many years before I did use daily), I end up getting frustrated... Many thanks for sharing your experience!
rvz 4y ago
It is not ready for daily driving (yet). To save your time. That is the answer.

loudmax 4y ago

I can't speak for S4/suspend to disk level hibernation, but regular S3/sleep when I close the lid has worked perfectly for me since 2008. That isn't to say that it's worked out of the box. When I install Linux on a laptop, I'll put some effort into making sure everything works as wanted and this might involve adding kernel flags or mucking with dbus, and it certainly involves some research. If you expect any open source OS to behave like a proprietary OS you bought a license for, you're likely to be disappointed. If you come in with the expectation of learning to solve problems for yourself you'll fare much better.

dmm 4y ago
Unfortunately s3 has been removed from everything after tiger lake in intel chips, replaced with s0ix, which has caused a bunch of problems. For example, https://old.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/k7xrtz/ill_have_whatever_intel_was_smoking_when_they/ https://old.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/k7xrtz/ill_have_w... Sleep works fine in my alder lake(12th gen) Framework on Fedora, as in it actually sleeps when you close the lid, but it won't last a week like a mac.
- reacharavindh 4y ago
  By any chance do you know if AMD Ryzen CPUs retain the s3 sleep/resume facilities? As in can I get a Mac like suspend/resume behaviour with Ryzen and Linux?
  - dmm 4y ago
    > As in can I get a Mac like suspend/resume behaviour with Ryzen and Linux? What do you mean? Reliably suspending on lid close? That will depend on the system. My 12th gen Framework with Fedora is very reliable in that way. Battery lasting a week+ when sleeping? Don't count on it but sleep time will depend on the system. Even s3 sleep varied a lot. Some systems wouldn't suspend ssd during s3, for example. Arguably s2idle/s0ix is more mac-like, in that it is faster to sleep/wakeup than s3, which can take 6-10 seconds. It's just not as well supported and is much more flexible, in the sense that the os has more control over what is running during sleep. Windows is supposedly takes a strategy of incrementally powering down devices as sleep duration increases to preserve battery.
    - pxc 4y ago
      > s3, which can take 6-10 seconds. What? S3 should be well under 5 seconds. 10 seconds is like a whole clean boot, or resuming from hibernation on NVMe.
    - reacharavindh 4y ago
      > My 12th gen Framework with Fedora is very reliable in that way. How long does it take for your Intel Framework machine to sleep properly upon shutting the lid, and how long until it is ready to use after you open the lid?

mh7 4y ago

Well not even Windows can manage to sleep a 'modern standby' laptop reliably these days. I had to set hibernate on lid-close because Windows kept waking it up all the time even while closed.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
I have always been curious why I have been seeing people with MacBooks close their lids and walk away at a moment’s notice for nearly 20 years, but I still do not expect to be able to do that from any non Macbook. Such a killer feature that one would think Microsoft would prioritize.
- dvdkon 4y ago
  It used to work, S3 suspend is a problem-free experience on both Linux and Windows . But some genius thought that laptop hardware needed power management more like a phone without all the software being built for it, with no fallback.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    In my Windows experience since 2000, closing the lid to sleep did not work on Toshiba Satellite, HP NW8000 series business machines, HP Elitebook, Dell Precision, and still does not work on Dell Latitudes. And I believe those were all business grade laptops, except the Toshiba Satellite.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      At least on Linux, machines that have proper suspend states integrated into their CPU should get picked up by the kernel and managed properly. My T460s with an i7 6600u sleeps and hibernates just fine, but my 12700k desktop still doesn't know what to do in suspend/hibernation states. Hopefully AMD is doing better with this these days(?)
- osigurdson 4y ago
  Microsoft has traditionally believed in abstractions (i.e. interfaces) while Apple believe in concrete implementations. Abstractions are flexible but always leak and therein lies the problems. I think the interface approach made sense I earlier days of computing. These days it is better to make a zillion, exactly the same computer like Apple does.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    So it is technically impossible with Microsoft’s software? Surely Microsoft has the resources to coordinate hardware and software with Dell/HP/Lenovo on making at least 1 reliable line of laptops where you can close the lid and reliably expect it to instantly sleep and not randomly wake up.
    - whatwherewhy 4y ago
      I bet Microsoft would like that - they tried and then after it didn't work out for 2 decades of laptops they started making their own hardware. The 3rd party vendors don't care too much to change the ways they work - they juggle the hardware they put into the laptops all the time, one model-year can have over 100 variants (some Lenovo models go into thousands). Apple has few standard components shared across all products and that's it.
- dec0dedab0de 4y ago
  it seems like more often than not my macbook completely drains its battery or comes out of my backpack hot when I just close the lid.
- pxc 4y ago
  You don't get instant on with most hardware (some laptops have achieved it through CoreBoot, System76 sells some like that), but with anything that supports S3 and NVMe you can definitely get a reliable system where your laptop can sleep for weeks at a time. Just set up suspend-then-hibernate in systemd on a laptop with a fast SSD.
kup0 4y ago
Modern standby is an absolute disaster. It is shameful that the industry adopted and pushes this now.
drexlspivey 4y ago
My windows laptop is basically 24/7 on sleep and it’s still #1 in DNS requests on pihole.

yusefnapora 4y ago

I run NixOS in Parallels, and it's super nice. I copied a config from https://github.com/wegank/nixos-config/tree/main/hardware/parallels https://github.com/wegank/nixos-config/tree/main/hardware/pa... for an updated parallels-tools package, for things like copy/paste and mounting shared folders from the host OS. I'm really happy with it overall. All the hardware works perfectly, and I don't notice the bit of RAM & CPU reserved for the host. The only downside is that some packages aren't available for aarch64-linux, e.g. Slack, Spotify, etc. I just run those on the host OS instead, which is a little annoying due to context switching but not a huge deal.

yusefnapora 4y ago
Hmm, my edit below erased my original comment, as I wasn't paying attention... Anyway, the gist is that NixOS runs great in Parallels, using the patched parallels-tools module from this nixos config: https://github.com/wegank/nixos-config/tree/main/hardware/parallels https://github.com/wegank/nixos-config/tree/main/hardware/pa... Some packages on nixpkgs aren't available for aarch64-linux, but mostly unfree stuff like Spotify that's available on macOS. Overall I really like it, and I hardly ever interact with the host OS anymore for dev work. That said, I still use macOS for casual browsing, since scrolling and trackpad gestures are smoother than in linux. Not a big deal, since copy/paste works fine. edit to add a link to my config, which has a couple tweaks for screen resolution, etc: https://github.com/yusefnapora/nixos-system-flake/blob/main/system/hosts/parallels-guest.nix https://github.com/yusefnapora/nixos-system-flake/blob/main/... Mine is using an older and more complicated version of the parallels-tools patch, so go with the one linked above if you end up using Parallels. You could also try UTM, which now has support for Rosetta for x86 binaries. There's a good writeup for NixOS + Rosetta here that I can confirm works: https://xyno.space/post/nixos-utm-rosetta https://xyno.space/post/nixos-utm-rosetta - I had some random instability with UTM though, so switched back to Parallels.

csdvrx 4y ago

> No need to change the CPU architecture. But you need to relearn the keyboard as it's not a standard ThinkPad keyboard (no PageUp and PageDown above Left and Right) That detail alone means I won't buy it. Emulation or recompilation has fewer drawbacks than changing habits.

bestouff 4y ago
You didn't see a Mac keyboard then.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > standard ThinkPad keyboard They're talking about how ThinkPad keyboards have looked and worked since forever. Seems it changed recently.
  - csdvrx 4y ago
    It hasn't "changed", it's more like a variant that's been introduced for both the gamers and end-users laptops line (Z series) The professional lines (ex: X series) are still using the standard ThinkPad keyboard.
    - pxc 4y ago
      GP is probably referring to the move away from the classic keyboard, which more resembles the IBM desktop layout (separated F keys in clusters of 4, standard home/end/pgup/pgdown arrangement, etc.). To fans of that layout, the standard (still typical on desktops) was abandoned on ThinkPads ~10 years ago.
folkrav 4y ago
Being constrained to a single keyboard layout all your life sounds awfully limiting. I literally swap between completely different keyboards often (ortholinear/standard staggered/split layouts/etc). It takes some getting used to in the first couple of weeks, but once you're used to swapping layouts often, your brain just adjusts automatically.
- csdvrx 4y ago
  There are some gains from being able to adjust, and some other gains for being able to use any computer with the same shortcuts and the key where I expect them to be. Personally, I prefer the gains from the latter approach: for example, I use ThinkPad bluetooth keyboards with eink tablets and Termux when I want to switch to something easier to my eyes. Keeping the same environment (ssh + tmux + bash + vim) with similar keyboards layouts means my workflow and habits have become very independent from the hardware: I only have maintain separate shortcut remapping solutions based on the OS (AutoHotKey for windows, sds100 keymapper for Android)
  - folkrav 4y ago
    > my workflow and habits have become very independent from the hardware Isn't being constrained to a particular keyboard layout being _really_ dependent on hardware, to the contrary?
    - csdvrx 4y ago
      There are various thinkpads laptops, bluetooth keyboards, USB keyboards all from Lenovo so I can mix and match. There are also non Lenovo keyboard makers following the same layout like the Tex Shinobi. To me, it seems better than the alternatives of having different layouts and maintaining different set of shortcuts.